Related papers: An experimental testbed for NEAT to demonstrate mi…
SIM PlanetQuest (Space Interferometry Mission) is a space-borne Michelson interferometer for precision stellar astrometry, with a nine meter baseline, currently slated for launch in 2015. One of the principal science goals is the…
Ground based radial velocity (RV) searches continue to discover exoplanets below Neptune mass down to Earth mass. Furthermore, ground based transit searches now reach milli-mag photometric precision and can discover Neptune size planets…
The Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker (SunCET) is an extreme ultraviolet imager and spectrograph instrument concept for tracking coronal mass ejections through the region where they experience the majority of their acceleration: the…
Assess the joint capabilities of emerging telescopes for near-Earth objects (NEOs) survey and characterization, and what they will add to the current capabilities or replace. NASA telescopes in prime mission, in development, or under study,…
An X-ray Interferometer (XRI) has recently been proposed as a theme for ESA's Voyage 2050 planning cycle, with the eventual goal to observe the X-ray sky with an unprecedented angular resolution better than 1 micro arcsec (5 prad) [1]. A…
Precision astrometry at microarcsecond accuracy has application to a wide range of astrophysical problems. This paper is a study of the science questions that can be addressed using an instrument that delivers parallaxes at about 4…
The Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS) is a first-generation instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), Europe's next-generation 39 m ground-based telescope for optical and infrared wavelengths. METIS will offer…
Context: Exoplanet science has made staggering progress in the last two decades, due to the relentless exploration of new detection methods and refinement of existing ones. Yet astrometry offers a unique and untapped potential of discovery…
The NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED) is a general purpose stellar archive with the aim of providing support for NASA's planet finding and characterization goals, stellar astrophysics, and the planning of NASA and other space…
The success of the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) space mission depends on measuring the faint mid-infrared emission spectra of exoplanets while suppressing the glare of a host star. This requires an instrument capable of…
The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey is a ground-based program designed to search for transiting exoplanets orbiting relatively bright stars. To achieve this, the KELT Science Team operates two planets facilities -…
Stellar photospheric heterogeneity is a dominant astrophysical systematic impacting exoplanet transmission spectroscopy. NASA's Pandora SmallSat Mission is designed to address this challenge through contemporaneous visible photometry and…
The Planet Hunting and Asteroseismology Explorer Spectrophotometer, PHASES, is a concept for a space-borne instrument to obtain flux calibrated spectra and measure micro-magnitude photometric variations of nearby stars. The science drivers…
BRITE-Constellation (where BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer) is an international nanosatellite mission to monitor photometrically, in two colours, the brightness and temperature variations of stars generally brighter than mag(V) ~ 4,…
EarthFinder is a NASA Astrophysics Probe mission concept selected for study as input to the 2020 Astrophysics National Academies Decadal Survey. The EarthFinder concept is based on a dramatic shift in our understanding of how PRV…
The large number of new planets expected from wide-area transit surveys means that follow-up transmission spectroscopy studies of their atmospheres will be limited by the availability of telescope assets. We argue that telescopes covering a…
The Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) is a space mission designed to perform photometric observations of bright stars to obtain precise radii measurements of transiting planets. The high-precision photometry of CHEOPS relies on…
METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (formerly called MIDIR), is a proposed instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), currently undergoing a phase-A study. The study is carried out within the framework of…
With the aim of paving the road for future accurate astrometry with MICADO at the European-ELT, we performed an astrometric study using two different but complementary approaches to investigate two critical components that contribute to the…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…